David McElroy

The woman was flabbergasted to discover that I don’t own a television.

“But what do you do every night after dinner?” she asked with a tone bordering on shock.

I explained that I spend most of my free time reading and thinking and writing — and I said that I also spend a good bit of time talking with friends. She seemed dubious, but said she could at least understand talking with friends.

She wanted to know how I watch streaming services in order to view the popular shows she listed. Everybody watches those. I told her I don’t watch any streaming services, so I’ve never seen any of the shows she mentioned.

She would have seemed less surprised if I had told her I spend my evenings in the basement making sacrifices to Baal. She struggled to respond, as though her mind couldn’t grasp what I was telling her.

“But that’s not normal,” she finally said. “Everybody watches the same shows. We all talk about them. Why don’t you just get a television? They’re cheap now. And you could be like the rest of us.”

I changed the subject, because it would have sounded too arrogant — from her point of view — if I had explained that the last thing I want is to be like her. I’ve spent years breaking free from the brainwashing of the “normal life” she loves so much.

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Our culture is locked in a battle over objective reality.

The ability to observe objective facts and then use reason to interpret them was at the center of human progress for the last few hundred years. Science that came out of this allowed us to improve the world. We made ourselves fabulously wealthy by historical standards. We improved the lives and health of everyone.

Today, we’re slowly throwing all that away.

One group claims that men can become women — and vice versa — just because they feel that way. They claim that subjective feelings — across a wide range of issues — determines what is allowed and what is not.

Another group is perfectly happy to follow politicians who tell lies at an unprecedented scale. These people don’t mind the lies and don’t mind ignoring reality they don’t like — just as long as their side holds power.

In the meantime, a few of us still insist that truth matters. Objective reality matters. Character matters. Honesty matters.

For those of us in that intellectual and moral “no man’s land,” we watch as clowns to the left and jokers to the right insist that seizing power and defeating enemies is all that matters.

And some of us know that nothing can change until our society can once again show a principled commitment to objective reality and truth — as a broad consensus.

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It’s hard for me to love other people. It’s even harder for me to love myself.

I was driving home from work Monday evening and I had just angrily hung up the phone. A woman had called me from a company that did some work at my house a few years ago. I didn’t like the way the company was handling its business with me, but it was nothing personal with the woman.

The thing that annoyed me wasn’t her fault. She was just reading a script. She was doing her job. But I was in a bad mood — and I took out my frustrations on her.

I wasn’t nasty or rude, but I certainly wasn’t kind or loving.

As I drove the rest of the way down I-459 toward home, I stewed in my irritation, but my annoyance quickly turned toward myself. I wasn’t upset with that woman or her company.

I lectured myself about being a hypocrite. I berated myself about my unwillingness to live up to my values when it wasn’t convenient — when I wasn’t in the right mood.

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